Scan Bar Codes With Your iPhone

I have mixed emotions about writing this blog, because I actually had a very similar idea for an iPhone app back in the summer of 2008, but didn't know if the technology existed and never got around to finding out. Then, in October of that year, ShopSavvy showed up on Android and I lost interest.

ShopSavvy was, as TechCrunch put it, "one of the best early Android applications." And today, it's finally available on the iPhone. What does it do? Once downloaded (and it's free, by the way), you open it, point your iPhone's camera at a product bar code and the app will scan the bar code and, along with giving you product information, will find out where the best deals are (locally and online) and offer product reviews. If the prices you're finding are still too high for your liking, you can create a price alert, so it'll let you know when the price drops to what you requested. And it even has the bar code scanning sound.

Here's a video demonstration:

Pretty freaking cool, huh? I've had the SnapTell app for a while, which allows you to take pictures of an item and it'll find the best prices both locally and online, but it only supports taking pictures of books, CDs, DVDs and video games at this point. ShopSavvy opens things up quite a bit. And I'm sure the timing of releasing it just over a week before Black Friday isn't just a coincidence.

So go forth and find the best deals, iPhone users.

Photo courtesy of pasukaru76, via Flickr